


FEELING

by LemuelCork



Category: Haven - Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-12
Updated: 2015-11-12
Packaged: 2018-05-01 06:01:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5194853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LemuelCork/pseuds/LemuelCork
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nathan and Duke, when the end comes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	FEELING

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shealynn88](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shealynn88/gifts).



How Nathan feels doing it:

It’s a duty. An obligation to a friend, and more than a friend. 

He hates it. He hates it more than anything he’s ever had to do. He feels it like a stone in his throat, choking him. For a man who can’t feel another’s touch, it’s easy to get used to not feeling anything, but this, my god, he feels this like a thousand pound weight on his chest.

But he does it. He does it.

#

They’re fourteen years old, the year after high school began, the year (one of many) the Troubles came back. They’re out on the lake, in Duke’s boat because the Chief would never allow a Crocker in theirs. And Duke’s full of questions: You really can’t feel anything? Really? Not even this? And he pinches Nathan’s arm, hard.

Nope. 

Not even this? And he slaps him right across the face. 

Which another kid, any other kid, would slap him back for, feeling or not, Troubles or not. But Nathan just takes it, just sits there and takes it, and Duke looks at him with this expression of disbelief that has just a hint of something else in it, right below the surface. Like, what else would you sit there and take if I did it to you? And Nathan sits there, patiently, no expression on his face, but inside, he’s aching. Because he can’t feel Duke’s touch, but that doesn’t mean he can’t feel.

#

They’re on the hilltop with the barn on it, that goddamn barn, and Audrey’s there, and she’s going to walk in through that door and there’s not a thing either of them can do about it. And then there’s Jordan, coming out from behind a stand of trees, right at the corner of Nathan’s vision, raising her arm too quickly, the gun in her hand, and it’s Duke who steps in to defend him. Too late – Jordan’s pulled the trigger, the bullets strike him. But then Duke’s retribution comes, swift and severe, a hail of bullets for his fallen friend. The fury, the rage – out of all proportion to the harm she’d caused, since the wounds were superficial, and he couldn’t feel them anyway. But at the possibility of losing Nathan, losing him to this woman, this, this _rival_ , Duke literally goes ballistic. The prospect of losing Audrey moves him, but the prospect of losing Nathan…ignites him.

#

They’re in the Grey Gull, after that guy, the one whose touch froze anything solid – Beaufort? Bowman? they’ve all started to blur – went off the edge of the dock. Nathan tried to reach in after him, out of reflex, as the guy flailed, the water turning to ice around him. And Duke pulled him back – more than pulled him, threw him bodily onto a heap of scrap lumber. Shouted at him. “What the hell, Nathan? What were you thinking?”

“He’s going to die!” 

“Yes!” Duke jabs a finger out at the water. “Him. Not you.” And his chest is heaving, only partly from the exertion of heaving Nathan’s six-foot-plus bulk away from the brink.

#

It’s 2010, a low point in their relationship, and there’s this new face in town. It’s a woman, an FBI agent, so of course Duke starts acting weird. Of course. But Nathan does too, and it’s not just because she’s attractive, not just because she wound up naked on Duke’s boat after one day in town, not even just because womenlike that have a particular fascination for a man like Duke. He likes to bed them just to show he can, to prove something to himself, and to Nathan. Well, consider it proved. But what Nathan’s feeling is something different. As he sees them talk and flirt and spar, in a way he never could, he realizes what he’s feeling is envy. The envy of a spark for a lightning bolt, a breeze for a hurricane. Nathan’s good looking, and smart, and he’s even an officer of the law – but he’s no Audrey Parker. 

#

Duke’s in his arms. Dying. His hair is thin and gray, his limbs palsied, his skin parched and leathery. And it has all happened in the span of a half hour. His daughter is killing him – by her very presence, her mere existence, she is turning him prematurely old, as if every hungry breath she takes is extracted from him, her vitality won at the expense of his. Nathan can’t help but think of what it must be like to lose a spouse in childbirth. The anger the surviving parent must feel, even toward his own child! Nathan wants this infant child to survive and thrive, of course he does. But he looks at what she’s doing to Duke and for a moment he would do anything to run the clock backwards, to see Duke grow straight and vital again, even if it meant erasing the girl, rewinding to her own nonexistence.

#

There are two of him, three of him – a crowd, an army. Dukes everywhere, thanks to the baker’s curse -- the assistant baker -- Sam. Whose dough wouldn’t rise, whose cabinets weren’t full, whose loaves were too few.Suddenly those few who’d been lucky enough to score one saw themselves dividing, multiplying, a loaf turned into slices. A single high school troublemaker became a gang; a single musician, an orchestra. And Duke, Duke, oh gosh – there were so many, too many, Nathan never told anyone how many. They faded as Sam’s anxiety was quelled – Audrey at her very best, taming the wild magic, the runaway condition. The multiples vanished one by one, slowly. But there was a day when several still existed. Several musicians, playing one final harmony as the sun set behind the harbor. And several Dukes aboard the Cape Rouge, none of them the real article, all fated to an existence as ephemeral as a soap bubble, and so – they were the Dukes he could for once be honest with. Be everything with. Be one with.

#

There is one of him. Only one. And if Nathan doesn’t act – act now – there will be one forever, but it won’t be Duke, it won’t even be human. Already, Croatoan’s power over him is reasserting itself. Duke has moments left, not days, not hours. Not enough time. Not for words, not for silence. Not even for a kiss.

Do it to me, Nathan, he begs. You have to. Only you can.

And Duke stabs out with a trembling hand, touches the tip of his index finger to the center of the labyrinth tattooed on Nathan’s arm, the tattoo Nathan placed upon himself in anticipation of this day, this moment. Dreading it. Foreseeing it. It was his arm in the prophet’s dream, and he always knew it. They both did.

_Do it to me. Do it now._

And Nathan does. Crying, for everything they’ve lost, and been, and spent, and won, for everything they never were. He stretches out his hand and imagines the feel of Duke’s lips beneath his palm, imagines them tightening against his skin. Maybe there was time after all.

But if it happens, he does not, he cannot, feel it.

He can only do his duty.

This is how Achilles felt, laying Patroklos to rest. The passage of three thousand years has not lessened by an ounce, by half a gram, the burden of such savage grief, such brutal necessity.

#

 


End file.
